What India (says it) is reading

There 'sarash of skepticism in cyberspace these days.
A peculiar side effect of the latest viral trend on the Internet -the Ten Books List.And the fact that, all of a sudden, acquaintances you've always associated with cricket, beer and mani-pedis are mutating into hardcore fans of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Chinua Achebe. At least on Facebook.
For those who haven't visited Facebook recently, here's an update.The Ice Bucket Challenge has given way to the Book Bucket Challenge. So, instead of dunking yourself with freezing water and spending days in bed with a hacking cough, you sit at your computer and cogitate. Then you list "the 10 books that have influenced you" and show the world how brainy-sensitive-serious you are. After which you nominate friends and acquaintances to compile their lists.(Keeping your fingers tightly crossed that they don't out-Sartre you.) The Book Bucket Challenge was initiated by One Village, One Library with a clear aim in mind. The Kochibased NGO wanted to create a buzz about reading and encourage people to donate books to libraries. So it decided to ride the wave of the Ice Bucket Challenge.
Except that this well-meaning challenge has resulted in an epidemic of intellectual braggadocio. For if these favourite-book-lists are to be believed, the likes of Kafka and Camus are regular fare for guys who usually employ Facebook to disseminate drunken selfies and posts like "Gud lk 4 ur xams."
In response to these lists, The Huffington Post recently carried a snippy piece titled, 'Stop Lying about your Favourite Books on Facebook' in which the writer ranted, "No, your favorite book is not 'The Sound and the Fury.' No, you did not finish 'Infinite Jest.' 'One Hundred Years Of Solitude'? You read that in 10th grade. I know because I was in that English class with you."
Equally, a slew of irritable Indian tweets have appeared, complaining that "Number of people who google 'top books to read' and add them to their list is too damn high". Or "I like how all these ppl r saying Murakami and Ayn Rand. As if they've been reading them since they were 10 yrs old." And, "FB Folks are busy posting a pretentious list of 10 book titles, whereas the reality looks more like Goosebumps, Archies, Tinkle & Champak."
So do these lists offer a clue about what India is reading? Or is it merely an insight into what Indians feel they should be reading? After all, you would hardly fess up to loving Mills and Boons, when everybody around you is waxing eloquent about Haruki Murakami's exquisite way with "alienation and loneliness".
Despite the inevitable fudging and fabrication, however, the innumerable book lists being generated across the globe are throwing up revelatory facts. Earlier in the week, the Facebook Data Studies crew analyzed 1,30,000 lists online and came up with the 100 books that appear most frequently on these lists. "The demographics of those posting were as follows: 63.7% were in the US, followed by 9.3% in India, and 6.3% in the UK. Women outnumbered men 3.1:1. The average age was 37."
Harry Potter topped the international list, followed by 'To Kill a Mockingbird', the works of JRR Tolkien and 'Pride and Prejudice'. Next came 'The Holy Bible' and 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'. And then other, irresistible classics like 'The Catcher in the Rye', the Narnia series and 'Little Women'.
But to what extent do these facts reflect the reading trends in India? What are the books that appear most frequently on Indian lists?
After browsing through about 100 random lists on Facebook, it's appar ent that Indian tastes are quite distinct. For although there is some overlap — Harry Potter, Harry Potter and more Harry Potter — Indian readers have clear-cut favourites:
* Dan Brown clearly has a following in India, and many readers claim to be "deeply influenced" by potboilers Angels and Demons'.
* Similarly Nicholas Sparks' very American, romantic dramas like 'Message in a Bottle' touch a chord in distant India.
* As do Khaled Hosseini's hearttugging blockbusters set in Afghanistan.
* 'The Alchemist' by Paulo Coelho, a fable about an Andalusian shepherd who has a dream that compels him to travel to Egypt, has clearly achieved cult status in India.
* Which, perhaps, explains the popularity of 'Tuesdays with Morrie' by Mitch Albom -a non-fiction book about a series of conversations between a journalist and his old, dying professor during which they discuss love, tolerance and happiness.
* Another non-fiction book that crops up on many earnest lists is 'Ignited Mind' by Dr A P J Abdul Kalam. The former President has written about the path that India needs to travel and the ideas it needs to embrace.
* Then there are the literary heavyweights. If the lists on Facebook are to be believed, Gabriel Garcia Marquez has had a deep impact on many, many readers in India. How much this has to do with his glorious magic realism, and how much with the fact that he has been labelled "one of the most significant writers of our times" is anybody's guess
* Which is a question that also pops up about Orhan Pamuk, another popular name on the highbrow lists.The Turkish writer has a dense, circumlocutory style that challenges even ardent readers. (Two years ago, my book club chose to read 'My Name is Red', Pamuk's quirky take on the murder mystery. At the discussion session a month later the attendance set a record. Only two members showed up.)
* Another difficult but intellectually fashionable writer who figures is Murakami. His strange, beautiful books with their dreamy tangents are often difficult to understand and digest. Hardly the stuff of popular fiction and mass nominations -but he's clearly a big force in the life of the anonymous Indian reader.
* Who also, incidentally, loves Chetan Bhagat. A fact that upset a member of the Twitterati enough to exclaim, "The day people started mentioning Chetan Bhagat books on the #BookBucketChallenge, i lost faith in people & understood that Aliens Exist."